School Reform in Black and White: The Fight to Save John Burroughs

Posted on February 3, 2011 by admin

(The “More Room On the Outside Interview” with Maria Jones won a DCTV Viewers’ Choice Award for “Best Community Focused Program.”)

At the height of their power, former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed 23 schools. The Fenty/Rhee goal had been 24. The parents at John Burroughs Elementary School in Northeast D.C., however, refused to allow their neighborhood school to be closed. Appearing on “More Room On the Outside” on DCTV this past June, Maria Jones, an activist and John Burroughs parent, discussed the effort to save the Ward 5 school.

“From [the moment we heard the school was slated for closure] to the point where Adrian Fenty made an announcement and said John Burroughs would remain open, we never slept, we barely ate,” Jones said. “My husband now has health problems because of the physical nature of that struggle. It was really a physical fight. It was mental, it was emotionally draining. We did everything that we could to get that school to remain open.”

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The Adams Morgan Hotel and the “Sucker’s List”

Posted on February 2, 2011 by admin

Live simply so that others may simply live. – Mahatma Gandhi

Dec. 21, in a 9-3 vote, the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation providing $46 million in tax abatements for the construction of a 5-star luxury boutique hotel in the multicultural and economically diverse neighborhood of Adams Morgan in Northwest D.C. The recipient of the District’s largess is 32-year-old developer Brian Friedman and his financial backers (his family). Friedman sees nothing wrong with requesting governmental assistance for a luxury hotel at a time when the District is cutting basic services. He said, “[This project is] like any other hotel built in this city… There’s always a subsidy.”

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Charter Schools vs. Public Schools, Past and Present

Posted on February 1, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO SHANTA DRIVER

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“The first charter school movement in the United States started from the Virginia Massive Resistance campaign,” said Shanta Driver, an education activist from Detroit and national co-chair of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). “[It] was a campaign to defeat the desegregation order of Brown v. Board of Education, and it was local, white, racist organizing to create schools throughout the south that would be private schools, publicly funded and that wouldn’t be subject to court ordered desegregation.”

This past April, Driver and other activists came to D.C. to protest President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s education policies which place great emphasis on promoting charter schools. In the south, charter schools “are, in their majority, all white schools,” Driver said. “And they’re being created combining public funding and private funding to create a separ Continue reading →

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Soccer vs Street Vendors in South Africa

Posted on January 31, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO LOUISE HAYSOM

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Louise Haysom

Sitting in an apartment in Northwest D.C., Louise Haysom, a South African activist, discussed the impact of last year’s FIFA World Cup Soccer games on South African street vendors. “By and large, what happens is that the host cities [for the World Cup] require… an exclusion zone,” said Haysom. Exclusion zones prohibit street vendors from selling their goods and are located “in the stadiums and around the stadiums. Those are traditionally places where street traders have traded always at soccer matches. There was maybe several thousand people who actually lost their livelihoods without any compensation at all. They are simply told that if you trade there, you’re going to be arrested. And they were.”

“The majority of these traders are often woman, single-headed households,” said Haysom. “I don’t think FIFA perhaps had thought about that, but we’re trying to introduce the idea that FIFA [should] have a lot more concern around what happens to the urban poor. If they’re going to take people’s jobs, that they think about how to rather give people support in building their incomes, rather than taking them away.”

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Is D.C.’s HPV Vaccine Mandate a Mistake?

Posted on January 28, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO EMILY TARSELL

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Christina Tarsell

Last April, as Emily Tarsell began her trek back to Northern Maryland following her testimony before the D.C. Council, she said, “I came down to try to support the families in Washington to be more aware of the [possible] adverse side effects of [the Human Papillomavirus vacine] Gardasil and to advocate for removing the mandatory requirement for vaccination.”

Legislation passed by the D.C. Council in 2007 mandates that girls receive the HPV vaccine prior to entering sixth grade. The District of Columbia and Virginia are the only two states to mandate the HPV vaccine, which some believe may prevent cervical cancer. Friday, Virginia’s House of Delegates voted 61-33 to drop the state’s mandate. The Washington Post noted, “[T]he House’s strong rejection of the mandated vaccine, just four years after it was approved overwhelmingly in the same chamber, is a sign of public uneasiness with HPV vaccination.” The bill now faces an uphill battle in the Virginia State Senate.

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Historic McMillan Park Threatened by Luxury Condos

Posted on January 26, 2011 by admin

January 4, 2011, on “More Room On the Outside,” Tony Norman, a veteran activist, member of the McMillan Park Committee and newly-elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, discussed the history of McMillan Park and the threat it now faces. McMillan Park is historic, Norman said, “because it’s the first area to supply the water to Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Capitol and it was part of the Emerald Necklace which surrounded the city with green space… It was landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. The Olmstead firm… also did the landscaping for New York’s Central Park and they did the landscaping for the U.S. Capitol and the Old Soldiers’ Home. So it was always a very important site in the history of Washington, D.C. It was named after Senator [James] McMillan who was in charge of the beautification of Washington, D.C. and it was declared a national park by… President [William] Taft. The history of the site has really been underestimated.”

Historic McMillan Park

“It’s been placed on the National Capital Planning Commission’s site of historic monuments,” Norman said. “There are a lot of groups that would like to put a national monument on the site. That’ll bring more tourists and more people to that area of Washington, D.C., [instead of just] on the [National] Mall. It’s a great historic site [and] it’s been recommended to go on the National Registry of historic places.”

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Bobb and Walmart Eye DC

Posted on January 21, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO TABRIAN CHAS JOE

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Robert Bobb

Robert Bobb is not new to either the District of Columbia or Walmart. From 2003-2006, Bobb served as D.C.’s City Administrator under Mayor Anthony Williams and from 2006-2008 he was president of the D.C. State Board of Education. For the past two years, Bobb has been the Emergency Financial Manager of Detroit Public Schools. His tenure in Detroit has been marked by mass school closings, the promotion of charter schools and the forming of partnerships with corporations like Walmart, according to Tabrian Chas Joe, a Detroit high school student and youth organizer with B.A.M.N.

Last April, after protesting oustide the Department of Education, Tabrian Chas Joe said, “In Detroit, they have Walmart coming to our schools, our public schools, they’re not even charter schools yet. They’re public schools funded by and run by private companies like Walmart and other companies, whoever wants to make a profit off students.”

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Taxi Drivers Look to Gray

Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO JOHN BUGG

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John Bugg

John Bugg is a native Washingtonian and a professional taxicab driver in the District of Columbia. Since 1957, Bugg has witnessed attempts to make D.C.’s taxicab industry like the rest of the country, where a few big companies dominate. D.C. remains unique in that many taxicab drivers independently own and operate their own vehicle. According to Bugg, it has always been a fight to keep the industry from being taken over. “We’ve been struggling in this thing for Lord have mercy, man. Ever since I can remember getting into a taxicab to do some business, it’s been a struggle. And it’s always been that element there to try and take this away from us. Even before Mayor [Walter] Washington and every mayor after that, even Marion Barry, they’ve tried to turn us around and take this thing away from us.”

Under Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. taxicabs switched from a zone system to a “time and distance meter.” The switch damaged drivers financially because the meters were set at one of the lowest rates in the country. “We haven’t made no money in three years,” said Bugg. D.C. taxicab drivers worked hard to defeat Mayor Fenty and now they are looking to Mayor Vincent Gray to fulfill his commitments to them. “I got a feeling that Mayor Gray gonna turn this thing around,” said Bugg. In addition to raising meter rates, D.C. taxicab drivers are calling on Mayor Gray to examine how they are treated by hack inspectors, as well as to appoint a D.C. taxicab driver to the DC Taxicab Commission (presently there are none).

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Silencing a Local Journalist: WPFW’s Suspension of Pete Tucker

Posted on January 13, 2011 by admin

Download a PDF of the report

Introduction

For the past two years, I have worked as a local journalist in the District of Columbia to bring more time and attention to social activists who routinely are ignored and silenced by the corporate media. Most of my stories, reports and long-form interviews have aired on WPFW 89.3 FM, Pacifica Radio (and are archived at TheFightBack.org). But now, my work no longer appears on this important station. I want to offer a brief summary of this situation in the hopes that it can be resolved.

Beginning in mid-April, my reporting became a nightly fixture on Spectrum Today, WPFW’s evening news program hosted by WPFW News Director Askia Muhammad. Over a six month period, Mr. Muhammad aired more than 100 of my reports and introduced me as “Journalist Peter Tucker.” These interviews were cited in the Washington Post, City Paper and FAIR’s Extra!, among other outlets.

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The Right to Housing, the Right to Shelter & Combating HIV/AIDS

Posted on January 3, 2011 by admin

On December 1st, World AIDS Day, journalist Pete Tucker gave the following speech, connecting homlessness, the lack of affordable housing and economic injustice with the spread of HIV & AIDS.

Full text of speech below the embedded video.

Mayor Adrian Fenty closed Franklin Shelter just a month before the beginning of the hypothermia season, a little more than two years ago. Fenty closed this desperately needed downtown shelter at time when not only was the temperature getting cold, but the economy as well. It was chilly all around. And for the 300 men who depended on the imperfect warmth of Franklin Shelter to help them survive, it was about to get worse.

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